This study aimed to determine the most acceptable and effective front-of-pack food labelling system for Australian consumers. Four systems were tested, including two variations of the GDA (Monochrome and Colour-Coded) and two variations of the Traffic Light (TL and TL + Overall Rating. 790 consumers took part in the survey. The TL system was the most effective in assisting consumers to identify healthier foods. Mandatory TL labelling regulations are recommended to assist consumers in making healthy food choices.
Archive for category Nutrition and obesity
Congress can fight the epidemic of childhood obesity by getting “junk” food out of school stores and snack machines, a parent-teacher group and the American Dietetic Association said on Tuesday.
The association between eating out and weight-related diseases has led to demands for nutritional labeling of restaurant foods. A new study examines the potential benefits of such labeling.
This free web-based seminar series aims to increase skills of researchers and practitioners in policy evaluation effectiveness.
The plenary sessions from the 20th National Conference on Chronic Disease Prevention and Control are now available to be viewed on-demand.
Some interventions are providing information and motivating individuals to modify their behaviors. Other interventions are modifying environmental forces through social policies. There is a tension between empowering individuals to manage their weight through diet and exercise and blaming them for failure to do so. Environments differ in their health-promoting resources; for example, poorer communities have fewer supermarkets, more fast-food outlets, and fewer accessible and safe recreational opportunities. A social justice perspective facilitates a synthesis of both models. The concept of ‘œbehavioral justice’ convey the principle that individuals are responsible for engaging in health-promoting behaviors but should be held accountable only when they have adequate resources to do so. This perspective maintains both individuals’ control and accountability for behaviors and society’s responsibility to provide health-promoting environments.
This review show that schools have been making some progress in improving the school food and physical activity environments but that much more work is needed. Stronger policies are needed to provide healthier meals to students at schools; limit their access to low-nutrient, energy-dense foods during the school day; and increase the frequency, intensity, and duration of physical activity at school.
This review by JAMES F. SALLIS and KAREN GLANZ found that numerous cross-sectional studies have consistently demonstrated that some attributes of built and food environments are associated with physical activity, healthful eating, and obesity. Residents of walkable neighborhoods who have good access to recreation facilities are more likely to be physically active and less likely to be overweight or obese. Residents of communities with ready access to healthy foods also tend to have more healthful diets. Disparities in environments and policies that disadvantage low-income communities and racial minorities have been documented as well.
Legal solutions are immediately available to the government to address obesity and should be considered at the federal, state, and local levels. Including legal strategies for limiting children’s food marketing, confronting the potential addictive properties of food, compelling industry speech, increasing government speech, regulating conduct, using tort litigation, applying nuisance law as a litigation strategy, and considering performance-based regulation as an alternative to typical regulatory actions. Finally, preemption is an overriding issue and can play both a facilitative and a hindering role in obesity policy.
The limited existing evidence suggests that small taxes or subsidies are not likely to produce significant changes in BMI or obesity prevalence but that nontrivial pricing interventions may have some measurable effects on Americans’ weight outcomes, particularly for children and adolescents,